If Joe Reitz was sleepwalking, he's one intense sleepwalker

Former Western Michigan basketball star Joe Reitz was quoted in the Washington Post as saying the following about his transition to the NFL's Baltimore Ravens:

"It's just humbling and challenging. Coming from Western Michigan, where I started (on the basketball team) for four years and pretty much knew all the plays like the back of my hand, I could go out there and just sleepwalk through practice. Coming here, there's so much thrown at you so soon ... "

The sleepwalking comment has drawn a stir on the NCAAbbs Broncos message board and, based on Reitz's words alone, I can understand why.

However, as someone who watched a number of WMU basketball practices from Reitz's sophomore year on, trust me when I tell you he didn't appear to be sleepwalking. Donald Lawson -- and Wes deVries before that -- has the battle wounds to prove it. Reitz was an intense leader during practices and, early in Lawson's career, really got under Lawson's skin because of how physical he was.

Reitz's choice of words were poor here -- it's likely he was trying to say that he knew the system at WMU -- but I never saw anything but maximum effort from the man. This is a guy who improved a ton, especially from his junior to senior year, in terms of slowing down and becoming a cerebral basketball player, and really did get about all he could out of himself in college. That doesn't happen if you sleepwalk through practice.

And if he was sleepwalking ... well, the rest of his teammates would have needed helmets and chest protectors to survive practices if he had been awake.